Italy Records Ebola Case

Nurse developed symptoms after returning from Sierra Leone.

by Michael Smith Michael Smith North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
May 13, 2015

As if to underscore the dangers of complacency over the dwindling Ebola epidemic, Italy is reporting its first case of the virus.

An Italian healthcare worker who had been helping at an Ebola treatment center in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, was diagnosed after returning to Italy, according to the World Health Organization.

Italian news sources said the patient is a 37-year-old man who had been in Sierra Leone since February.

The WHO said he flew to Rome from Freetown May 7 and had no symptoms at the time.

Three days later, the patient, a nurse, developed symptoms, self-isolated, and was transported May 11 to a hospital in Sassari, in the northwest of Sardinia. Testing at Italy's Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome confirmed the infection May 12.

The man was flown to the institute on an Italian Air Force aircraft specially equipped to allow high-containment precautions. On arrival, the institute said today in a statement, the man was febrile, but lucid and able to cooperate.

He has been started on an experimental antiviral drug, the institute said, but did not give further details.

The case comes as the epidemic in West Africa appears to be slowing. Liberia, the country with the highest death toll from Ebola, has been declared free of the disease, and only a handful of cases were reported last week from Sierra Leone and Guinea.

It is also reminiscent of the case of Craig Spencer, MD, the New York City physician who developed symptoms of Ebola after returning home from Guinea last October.

Spencer was treated at Bellevue Hospital, made a complete recovery, and was released Nov. 11.

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